Christian Porter: An unexpected candidate for Prime Minister

It seems that talk of a leadership challenge just won’t go away. The Unshackled learnt of a push by disgruntled Liberal party members to take to the phones to see if they had the numbers to oust Malcolm Turnbull.

Names such as Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison were thrown around as possible contenders for the Prime Ministership. By mid-week the talk coming out of the Liberal party was that there were major concerns that any attempt to replace Turnbull would result in him quitting parliament forcing a by-election in Wentworth, with serious concerns that the Liberal party would not retain the seat. With such a slender majority in parliament this was something that many were not willing to accept.

It seemed as a result of the concerns over a possible by-election that any leadership challenge was done and dusted, but then just yesterday, multiple Liberal party sources confirmed that Ministers are now actively plotting Turnbull’s removal with a surprising name thrown into the mix as the leading replacement, Christian Porter.

Porter is the MP for Pearce in Western Australia and the Minister for Social Services, prior to this role he was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister. Before his arrival into federal politics in 2013, Porter was a Minister in the Western Australia state government, holding various portfolios including Attorney General, Minister for Corrective Services and Treasurer of Western Australia.

Porter is a former lawyer, having graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Law, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and a Bachelor of Economics, further studies were completed at the London School of Economics were he completed his Master of Science (Political Theory).

His working career saw him work as a lawyer for Clayton Utz and then moving into the WA State government, working as a Senior State prosecutor for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

At this stage, we can’t be sure that this will eventuate into an actual real challenge for the leadership or if this is just talk in the corridors of parliament, but one thing is certain, and that is Malcolm Turnbull has completely lost the respect of his colleagues and for that matter the Australia public with disastrous approval ratings showing just how unpopular he is with the Australian public.